1. Technical Field
The disclosed embodiments relate in general to systems and methods for associating content with physical objects and retrieving the so associated content and, more specifically, to systems and methods for using coded lighting for hiding and finding digital content associated with physical objects.
2. Description of the Related Art
Physical objects are tangible and can be seen, heard, touched and felt. Many of them also have hidden aspects that cannot be directly sensed such as history, maintenance schedule, users' opinions etc. The extra info may be important for people to interact with these objects. For example, when a family member feed fishes in a tank, other family members shouldn't overfeed these fishes after that feeding. If a family member waters a moisture sensitive plant on a certain day, other family members shouldn't water too much or too less after that day. There are works attaching visual codes (e.g. QR code, specific designed visual code, and RFID) on or around physical objects to enrich their contents. Such approaches are intrusive, and easily distract users' attention as users have to intentionally look around for the tags. On the other hand, recognizing the objects by means of computer vision techniques is highly affected by texture of objects and light condition of the environment.
Therefore, the conventional methods for associating information with physical objects are either intrusive or lack requisite reliability. Thus, new and improved systems and methods are needed that would enable users to associate invisible information with physical objects in a non-intrusive manner for subsequent retrieval by the same or a different user.